Tuesday, September 18, 2007

More Piedmont
Piedmont Office Realty Trust, the newly named Wells Real Estate Trust, filed to go public earlier this year. Today, with the Fed's 50 bps rate cut, REITs as a group shot up 5%. I hope Piedmont goes public soon as the market is saying that the rate cut benefits REITs. I am not sure the impact, if any, of the lawsuit noted below on the IPO. Piedmont's charter calls for liquidation if it does not go public by the end of January 2008. The new $500 million line of credit is not the actions of a company planning on liquidating in under five months. According to someone at Wells, the REIT's portfolio appraised between $8.50 and $9.00 per share late last year. I am curious if the IPO valuation will be higher than these appraised values and the last solicitation price of $9.30 per share in July 2007 by an outside firm looking to by 25 million shares.

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